Hitler's political ideas - The Holocaust Explained Website Think! Now you have read the section on antisemitism, reflect: Why do you think Hitler and others might have thought that the Jews were conspiring to rule the world for themselves? Why might Hitler have linked communism and Jews? Why did the Nazis want to rid Germany of mentally and physically disabled people? Want to know more? If you would like to know more about this subject you can find out more on the KS3 version of the site. Click here to visit the KS3 antisemitism pages. Mein Kampf While in prison, Hitler wrote his book Mein Kampf, in which he set out his political ideas and developed his antisemitic ideas. Mein Kampf did not contain any new ideas. Many people in the 19th and 20th centuries had believed that races were not equal, and that some people were stronger or better than others. Hitler took on these ideas, and stated that Germans were part of a race called ‘Aryans’ who were superior to all others and would one day rule the world. Aryans were said to have blonde hair and blue eyes and be of North European descent.

In Hitler’s view, Jews were a separate race and could not be German. He believed the Jews conspired against Aryans to rule the world for themselves. Hitler also believed that communism was a huge threat to Germany and should be destroyed. He thought that communism was a Jewish invention and that was another reason why he hated the Jews. Hitler also wanted to rid Germany of the mentally and physically disabled, because they were seen as imperfect and also a drain on the resources of the ‘master race’. This month in history Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1926 Mein Kampf (1926) In 1923 Adolf Hitler was arrested for attempting to overthrow the government in Munich. His National Socialist German Workers' Party (the Nazi party) was still relatively small, and he used his trial to attract national attention. In due course he was convicted and sentenced to prison; while there he wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle), outlining his political ideas. Mein Kampf was not taken seriously at first, but it includes many of the ideas the Nazis put in practice in the 1930s and 1940s.

-smv Volume One, Chapter Six: "War Propaganda" {1}The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the masses' attention to certain facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first time placed within their field of vision. {2}The whole art consists in doing this so skillfully that everyone will be convinced that the fact is real, the process necessary, the necessity correct, etc. But since propaganda is not and cannot be the necessity in itself, since its function. . . consists in attracting the attention of the crowd, and not in educating those who are already educated or who are striving after education and knowledge, its effect for the most part must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect. . . . {3}The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses. The fact that our bright boys do not understand this merely shows how mentally lazy and conceited they are. . . .

{4}The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out. {5}Thus we see that propaganda must follow a simple line and correspondingly the basic tactics must be psychologically sound. For instance, it was absolutely wrong to make the enemy ridiculous, as the Austrian and German comic papers did. It was absolutely wrong because actual contact with an enemy soldier was bound to arouse an entirely different conviction, and the results were devastating; for now the German soldier, under the direct impression of the enemy's resistance, felt himself swindled by his propaganda service. His desire to fight, or even to stand film, was not strengthened, but the opposite occurred. His courage flagged.

{6}By contrast, the war propaganda of the English and Americans was psychologically sound. By representing the Germans to their own people as barbarians and Huns, they prepared the individual soldier for the terrors of war, and thus helped to preserve him from disappointments. After this, the most terrible weapon that was used against him seemed only to confirm what his propagandists had told him; it likewise reinforced his faith in the truth of his government's assertions, while on the other hand it increased his rage and hatred against the vile enemy For the cruel effects of the weapon, whose use by the enemy he now came to know, gradually came to confirm for him the 'Hunnish' brutality of the barbarous enemy, which he had heard all about; and it never dawned on him for a moment that his own weapons possibly, if not probably, might be even more terrible in their effects. . . . {7}The function of propaganda is . . . not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for.

Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly. {8}It was absolutely wrong to discuss war-guilt from the standpoint that Germany alone could not be held responsible for the outbreak of the catastrophe; it would have been correct to load every bit of the blame on the shoulders of the enemy, even if this had not really corresponded to the true facts, as it actually did. . . . Volume One, Chapter Ten: "Causes of the Collapse" {9}The easiest and hence most widespread explanation of the present misfortune is that it was brought about by the consequences of the lost War and that therefore the War is the cause of the present evil. {10}There may be many who will seriously believe this nonsense but there are still more from whose mouth such an explanation can only be a lie and conscious falsehood. . . . Didn't these apostles of world conciliation . . . . glorify the benevolence of the Entente, and didn't they shove full blame for the whole bloody struggle on Germany? . . .

Will you claim that this was not so, you wretched, lying scoundrels? {11}It takes a truly Jewish effrontery to attribute the blame for the collapse solely to the military defeat. . . . {12}The foremost connoisseurs of this truth regarding the possibilities in the use of falsehood and slander have always been the Jews; for after all, their whole existence is based on one single great lie, to wit, that they are a religious community while actually they are a race - - -and what a race! . . . [The text continues, asserting a connection between Jewish businessmen and the process of industrialization and modernization.] {13}In proportion as economic life grew to be the dominant mistress of the state, money became the god whom all had to serve and to whom each man had to bow down. More and more, the gods of heaven were put into the corner as obsolete and outmoded, and in their stead incense was burned to the idol Mammon. . . . {14}Unfortunately, the domination of money was sanctioned even by that authority which should have most opposed it: His Majesty the Kaiser acted most unfortunately by drawing the aristocracy into the orbit of the new finance capital.

. . . It was clear that once a beginning had been made in this direction, the aristocracy of the sword would in a short time inevitably be overshadowed by the financial aristocracy. Regarded purely from the standpoint of blood, such a development was profoundly unfortunate: more and more, the nobility lost the racial basis for its existence, and in large measure the designation of 'ignobility' would have been more suitable for it. {15}A grave economic symptom of decay was the slow disappearance of the right of private property, and the gradual transference of the entire economy to the ownership of stock companies. {16}Now for the first time labor had sunk to the level of an object of speculation for unscrupulous Jewish business men; the alienation of property from the wage-worker was increased ad infinitum. The stock exchange began to triumph and prepared slowly but surely to take the life of the nation into its guardianship and control. . . . {17}What food did the German press of the pre-War period dish out to the people? Was it not the worst poison that can even be imagined?

Wasn't the worst kind of pacifism injected into the heart of our people at a time when the rest of the world was preparing to throttle Germany, slowly but surely? Even in peacetime didn't the press inspire the minds of the people with doubt in the right of their own state, thus from the outset limiting them in the choice of means for its defense? Was it not the German press which knew how to make the absurdity of 'Western democracy' palatable to our people until finally, ensnared by all the enthusiastic tirades, they thought they could entrust their future to a League of Nations? . . . Did it not ridicule morality and ethics as backward and petty-bourgeois, until our people finally became 'modern'? . . . Did it not belittle the army with constant criticism, sabotage universal conscription, demand the refusal of military credits, etc., until the result became inevitable? {18}The so-called liberal press was actively engaged in digging the grave of the German people and the German Reich.

We can pass by the lying Marxist sheets in silence; to them lying is just as vitally necessary as catching mice for a cat; their function is only to break the people's national and patriotic backbone and make them ripe for the slave's yoke of international capital and its masters, the Jews. . . . {19}And what did the state do against this mass poisoning of the nation? Nothing, absolutely nothing. A few ridiculous decrees, a few fines for villainy that went too far, and that was the end of it. Instead, they hoped to curry favor with this plague by flattery, by recognition of the 'value' of the press, its 'importance,' its 'educational mission,' and more such nonsense - - -as for the Jews, they took all this with a crafty smile and acknowledged it with sly thanks. . . . {20}This poison was able to penetrate the bloodstream of our people unhindered and do its work, and the state did not possess the power to master the disease. . . . For an institution which is no longer resolved to defend itself with all weapons has for practical purposes abdicated.

Every half-measure is a visible sign of inner decay which must and will be followed sooner or later by outward collapse. {21}I believe that the present generation, properly led, will more easily master this danger. It has experienced various things which had the power somewhat to strengthen the nerves of those who did not lose them entirely. In future days the Jew will certainly continue to raise a mighty uproar in his newspapers if a hand is ever laid on his favorite nest, if an end is put to the mischief of the press and this instrument of education is put into the service of the state and no longer left in the hands of aliens and enemies of the people. But I believe that this will bother us younger men less than our fathers. A thirty-centimeter shell has always hissed more loudly than a thousand Jewish newspaper vipers-so let them hiss! Volume One, Chapter Eleven: "Nation and Race" {22}Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level produces a medium between the level of the two parents. This means: the offspring will probably stand higher than the racially lower parent, but not as high as the higher one. Consequently, it will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level.

Such mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life. The precondition for this does not lie in associating superior and inferior, but in the total victory of the former. The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he after all is only a weak and limited man. . . . {23}The consequence of this racial purity, universally valid in Nature, is not only the sharp outward delimitation of the various races, but their uniform character in themselves. . . . {24}Nature looks on calmly, with satisfaction, in fact. In the struggle for daily bread all those who are weak and sickly or less determined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the female grants the right or opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest. And struggle is always a means for improving a species' health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of its higher development.

{25}No more than Nature desires the mating of weaker with stronger individuals, even less does she desire the blending of a higher with a lower race, since, if she did, her whole work of higher breeding, over perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, night be ruined with one blow. {26}Historical experience offers countless proofs of this. It shows with terrifying clarity that in every mingling of Aryan blood with that of lower peoples the result was the end of the cultured people. North America, whose population consists in by far the largest part of Germanic elements who mixed but little with the lower colored peoples, shows a different humanity and culture from Central and South America, where the predominantly Latin immigrants often mixed with the aborigines on a large scale. By this one example, we can clearly and distinctly recognize the effect of racial mixture. The Germanic inhabitant of the American continent, who has remained racially pure and unmixed, rose to be master of the continent; he will remain the master as long as he does not fall a victim to defilement of the blood. . . .

{27}If we pass all the causes of the German collapse in review, the ultimate and most decisive remains the failure to recognize the racial problem and especially the Jewish menace. {28}The defeats on the battlefield in August, 1918, would have been child's play to bear. They stood in no proportion to the victories of our people. It was not they that caused our downfall; no, it was brought about by that power which prepared these defeats by systematically over many decades robbing our people of the political and moral instincts and forces which alone make nations capable and hence worthy of existence. {29}The lost purity of the blood alone destroys inner happiness forever, plunges man into the abyss for all time, and the consequences can never more be eliminated from body and spirit. Volume Two, Chapter Fourteen: "Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy" {30}We National Socialists must hold unflinchingly to our aim in foreign policy, namely, to secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled on this earth.

And this action is the only one which, before God and our German posterity, would make any sacrifice of blood seem justified: before God, since we have been put on this earth with the mission of eternal struggle for our daily bread, beings who receive nothing as a gift, and who owe their position as lords of the earth only to the genius and the courage with which they can conquer and defend it; and before our German posterity in so far as we have shed no citizen's blood out of which a thousand others are not bequeathed to posterity. The soil on which some day German generations of peasants can beget powerful sons will sanction the investment of the sons of today, and will some day acquit the responsible statesmen of blood-guilt and sacrifice of the people, even if they are persecuted by their contemporaries. {31}And I must sharply attack those folkish pen-pushers who claim to regard such an acquisition of soil as a 'breach of sacred human rights' and attack it as such in their scribblings. One never knows who stands behind these fellows. But one thing is certain, that the confusion they can create is desirable and convenient to our national enemies.

By such an attitude they help to weaken and destroy from within our people's will for the only correct way of defending their vital needs. For no people on this earth possesses so much as a square yard of territory on the strength of a higher will or superior right. Just as Germany's frontiers are fortuitous frontiers, momentary frontiers in the current political struggle of any period, so are the boundaries of other nations' living space. And just as the shape of our earth's Furnace can seem immutable as granite only to the thoughtless soft-head, but in reality only represents at each period an apparent pause in a continuous development, created by the mighty forces of Nature in a process of continuous growth, only to be transformed or destroyed tomorrow by greater forces, likewise the boundaries of living spaces in the life of nations. . . . {32}But we National Socialists must go further. The right to possess soil can become a duty if without extension of its soil a great nation seems doomed to destruction. And most especially when not some little negro nation or other is involved, but the Germanic mother of life, which has given the present-day world its cultural picture. Germany will either be a world power or there will be no Germany.

And for world power she needs that magnitude which will give her the position she needs in the present period, and life to her citizens. How 'Mein Kampf' Changed the World How 'Mein Kampf' Changed the World By Heather Whipps | September 1, 2008 05:18am ET MORE On this day in 1939, World War II began as Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Each Monday, this column turns a page in history to explore the discoveries, events and people that continue to affect the history being made today. Aside from the Bible, few books over time have stirred up such controversy as one composed from the cell of a German prison. It is a poorly-written mess, according to literary critics, but the ideas contained within Adolf Hitler's 1925 tome "Mein Kampf" (or My Struggle) sadly would resonate well beyond the book's quality of prose. Mein Kampf was the manifesto from which all of Hitler's atrocities stemmed, a tinderbox of a book that may have disappeared from the annals of history had the author not actually gone on to carry out the ideas presented in his tirade against all things non-German.

Because he did, however, the notorious book remains banned in some parts of the world, more than 80 years later, and has sparked ongoing debates about literary freedoms. Hitler passes the time behind bars Hitler rose through the ranks of Germany's small but powerful National Socialist (Nazi) political party to become its bombastic leader in the early 1920s. Believing that Germany's central Weimar government had let the country be ridiculed by a series of post-World War I punishments handed down by the victorious Allies, the Nazis attempted a coup d'etat in 1923. The famous "Munich Beer Hall Putsch" failed and sent Hitler to jail for high treason. While imprisoned, Hitler read piles of books on history and philosophy, consolidating his own set of beliefs all the while. He didn't consider putting his political ideas down on paper, however, until his business manager suggested that an autobiography might be a fruitful way to pass the time in prison.

At the urging of his manager, Hitler's original title for his work, "Four Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice," was also changed to the more marketable "My Struggle." Hitler did not, in fact, write the book himself, but dictated to his friend Rudolf Hess, who was imprisoned alongside him. Part autobiography, part political manifesto, the patchwork pages of "Mein Kampf" were put to print in 1925. By that time, Hitler had already been released from prison upon growing pressure from members of the Nazi party. A gift for the newly-married couple Despite being repetitive, long-winded and difficult to read, "Mein Kampf" had become a popular read throughout Germany by the late 1920s, disseminating Hitler's main theories to a large audience. In "Mein Kampf," the future chancellor of the Third Reich goes on at length about his youth and the early days of the Nazi Party, but it was his visions for a Germany of the future that resonated most with its readers. Chief among his ideas was the absolute, innate superiority of the Germanic race, which Hitler called Aryan, over every group of people.

"Mein Kampf" singled out Jews as the source of many of Germany's ills and a threat to Aryan dominance. The Aryans had a duty to restore Germany's former glory and enlarge its territory by winning back the land it had during World War I and gaining new area by expanding into Russia. "Mein Kampf" gained enormous readership in the early 1930s and once Hitler gained power as Chancellor of Germany in 1933, became the de facto Nazi bible. Every newly married couple received a free copy on their wedding day, and every soldier had one included as part of his gear. At the outset of World War II, the book had been translated into 11 languages and sold 5 million copies. The debate goes on today "Mein Kampf" was a clear-cut warning to the world of Hitler's intentions for war and genocide, which may have been recognized and prevented had more people read it outside of Germany, some historians say. Publishers in the United States and the U.K. did produce copies in English prior to the War , but were held up by copyright lawsuits by Hitler's publishers.

Since the war, the book has remained a flashpoint of controversy, especially in Germany and the former Axis nations. Worried over its use as propaganda by neo-Nazi groups, Germany and Austria have banned the possession and selling of "Mein Kampf" outright, while some countries restrict its possession to people using the book for academic purposes only. Opponents of the ban argue that the book is a valuable historical document, and that keeping it unavailable only makes it more desirable to right-wing groups. The debate over the book's ban has flared up again in Germany in recent months, with some groups calling for an edition carefully annotated by academics to be produced before 2015, when the book's copyright officially expires in Germany and it will become available to anyone in the general public to own and reprint. Editor's Recommendations Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf Adolf Hitler Nazism > Adolf Hitler > Mein Kampf Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf Mein Kampf (German "My Struggle") is a book written by Adolf Hitler, exposing Hitler's political ideology, National Socialism.

Contents: 4 Sequel The writing of Mein Kampf The first volume, titled Eine Abrechnung ("A reckoning") was published on July 18, 1925; the second volume Die nationalsozialistische Bewegung ("The national-socialistic movement") was published in 1926. The original title Hitler chose was “Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice.” His Nazi publisher, Max Amann, decided this title was too complicated and had it shortened to Mein Kampf (simply "My Struggle", or "My Battle"). Hitler dictated the book during his imprisonment in Landsberg to Emil Maurice, then after July 1924 to Rudolf Heß, who later, along with several others, edited it. The book has been said to be convoluted, repetitious and hard to read, but even cursory browsing clearly outlines major ideas that culminated in the horrors of WWII. Particularly prominent is Hitler's violent anti-Semitism.

For example, he claims that the international language Esperanto was part of a Jewish plot, and makes arguments towards the old German nationalist idea of Drang nach Osten: the necessity to gain Lebensraum ("living space") eastwards, especially in Russia. Much of the material was distorted or fabricated by the author. Hitler used the main thesis of "The Jewish peril", which speaks of an alleged Jewish conspiracy to gain world leadership. Overall, however, it does explain many details of Hitler's childhood and the process in which he became increasingly anti-Semitic and militaristic, especially during his years in Vienna. In one early chapter, he wrote about how he noticed Jews in the city streets for the first time and then asked himself 'Was that a German?' In terms of political theories, Hitler announced his hatred in Mein Kampf toward what he believed to be the twin evils of the world: Communism and Judaism, and he stated that his aim was to eradicate both from the face of the earth. He also announced that Germany needed to obtain new soil called lebensraum which would properly nurture the "historic destiny" of the German people; this goal explains why Hitler invaded Europe, both East and West, before he launched his attack against Russia.

Hitler presented himself as the "Übermensch", frequently rendered as the crude "Superman" (overman is the more appropriate term in its original context), that the basically a-political Friedrich Nietzsche had referred to in his writings, especially in his book, 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'. It is doubtful that Hitler read any Nietzsche beyond a superficial level, as Nietzsche did not refer to his overman in the way in which Hitler would refer to him. For Nietzsche it was a man who could overcome himself (hence overman and not superman) by controlling his impulses and would be able to channel this energy into something creative. The nationalism and anti-semitism that was indeed growing in Nietzsche's time was something which Nietzsche despised and wrote about continuously: there is probably no other writer from Germany that insulted the Germans more than Nietzsche. Since Hitler blamed the current parliamentary government for much of the ills against which he raged, he announced that he wanted to completely destroy that type of government. It is in Mein Kampf that the true nature of Hitler's character can be discovered. He divided humans up based on physical attributes.

Hitler stated that German "Aryans" with blond hair and blue eyes were at the top of the hierarchy (Hitler himself had brown hair and blue eyes), and assigned the bottom of the order to Jews, Poles, Russians, Czechs and Gypsies. Hitler went on to say that dominated peoples benefit by learning from the superior Aryans. Hitler further claimed that the Jews are conspiring to keep this master race from rightfully ruling the world, by diluting its racial and cultural purity and by convincing the Aryan to believe in equality rather than superiority and inferiority. He described the struggle for world domination as an ongoing racial, cultural, and political battle between Aryans and Jews. The supposed struggle for world domination between Aryans and Jews was accepted by the population when Hitler eventually came to power. Popularity prior to the Second World War Before Hitler's rise to power, the book sold very slowly. Although the NSDAP (the National Socialist German Workers' Party) claimed that it was already a huge seller, documents revealed following World War II proved this to be false. Some historians have speculated that a wider reading might have alerted the world to the dangers Hitler would pose to peace in Europe and to the Holocaust that he would pursue.

An abridged English translation was produced before World War II. However, the publisher removed some of the more anti-semitic and militaristic statements. The publication of this version caused Alan Cranston, who was an American reporter for UPI in Germany and later senator from California, to publish his own abridged and annotated translation, which he believed to more truly reflect the contents of the book. In 1939 he was sued by Hitler for copyright infringement and a Connecticut judge ruled in Hitler's favor; the publication of Cranston's version had to be stopped after about 500,000 copies had been sold. After Hitler's rise to power, the book gained enormous popularity and virtually became the Bible of every Nazi. Every couple intending to get married was required to own a copy. Sales of Mein Kampf earned Hitler millions; however, many of those who purchased it never read it from first page to last page, and many bought it simply to show their allegiance to Hitler, gain position in the NSDAP and avoid the attentions of the Gestapo. By the end of the war, about 10 million copies of the book had been distributed in Germany.

Current availability Today, the copyright of all editions of Mein Kampf except the English and the Dutch (Dutch government seized that in the same way) is owned by the state of Bavaria. The copyright will end on December 31, 2015. Historian Werner Maser, in an interview with Bild am Sonntag has stated that Peter Raubal, son of Hitler's nephew Leo Raubal, would have a strong legal case for winning the copyright from Bavaria if he pursued it. Raubal, an Austrian engineer, has stated he wants no part of the rights to the book, which could be worth millions of Euros. The government of Bavaria, in agreement with the Federal Government of Germany, does not allow any copying or printing of the book in Germany, and opposes it also in other countries but with less success. Owning and buying the book is legal. Trading in old copies is legal as well, unless it is done in such a fashion as to promote hatred or war, which is generally illegal. Most German libraries carry heavily commented and excerpted versions of Mein Kampf.

In the Netherlands selling the book, even in the case of an old copy, is illegal as promoting hatred, but possession and lending is not. In 1997 the government explained to the parliament that selling a scientifically annotated version might escape prosecution. In 1999, the Simon Wiesenthal Center documented that major internet booksellers like amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com sell Mein Kampf to Germany. After a public outcry, both companies agreed to stop those sales. Mein Kampf was an influential text among the Arab Ba’ath Party activists. An Arabic edition of Mein Kampf has been published by Bisan publishers in Lebanon. It ranks on the best-seller list among Palestinian Arabs. Public-domain copies of Mein Kampf are available at various Internet sites with links to banned books; also, several web sites provide copies of the book. However, some of those copies are edited in a dubious way, for example to replace the many references to Christianity in the book with neo-Pagan ones. Sequel After the party's poor showing in the 1928 elections, Hitler believed the reasons for loss was that public didn't fully understand his ideas.

He retired to Munich to dictate a sequel to Mein Kampf which focused on foreign policy. The book was never published, due either to his first book's poor sales or that it revealed too much of his plans. The book was locked in his publisher's safe and was not discovered until 1958. The first authoritative English edition was not published until 2003 (Hitler's Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf). Mein Kampf - History Learning Site Mein Kampf Citation: C N Trueman "Mein Kampf" historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, 22 May 2015. 16 Aug 2016. Mein Kampf Adolf Hitler , within the space of twelve months from 1923 to 1924, led an attempted revolt, the Beer Hall Putsch , which failed, and was sent to Landsberg Prison where he wrote “Mein Kampf”. Adolf Hitler was arrested after the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch . Hitler was charged with treason. Such an offence carried the death penalty in Germany at this time. His trial lasted five weeks and turned Hitler into a national figure.

For the first time, he was given a platform on which to make his views widely known to people outside of his party. Hitler’s right to defend himself was used as a means of attacking all those he hated – the Jews, communists, socialists and weak politicians who had lost Germany the war; the shameful signing of the Versailles Treaty by weak politicians etc. None of this was new and many right wing parties existed in Germany. However it was the way Hitler presented his ideas that brought him media attention. “History will tear to tatters the verdict of this court”, he announced shortly after sentence was passed. Hitler was found guilty of treason – a crime against your country. If he had been a socialist or communist, it is almost certain that he would have received the death sentence. However, many in the court supported his views and he received a prison sentence of 5 years. He was sent to Landsberg Prison near Munich. Here, the man found guilty of treason, had his own furnished cell, his own servant and was allowed into Landsberg itself during the day, returning at night to be locked up. In prison, Hitler decided that any future ventures by the Nazis would have to be legal.

Any action outside of the law would not be tolerated. In prison, Hitler became moody and depressed. He put his energy into his book “Mein Kampf” (My Struggle). This book explained to anybody who would read it, his plans for Germany’s future. There are also sections on boxing, the growing of roses etc. Many years later, in 1942, Hitler explained to army officers that “Mein Kampf” would never have been written if he had not been sent to prison. What does “Mein Kampf” tell us about Hitler’s beliefs? The following are extracts from the book: “The Jews were responsible for bringing negroes into the Rhineland with the ultimate idea of bastardising the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate.” “The Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end…spying on the unsuspicious German girl he plans to seduce…..he wants to contaminate her blood and remove her from the bosom of her own people.

The Jew hates the white race and wants to lower its cultural level so that the Jews might dominate.” “The longer I lived in Vienna, the stronger became my hatred for the promiscuous swarm of foreign peoples which began to batten on that old nursery ground of German culture.” (A reference to East Europeans) “Only an adequate large space on this earth assures a nation freedom of existence.” A reference to Hitler’s policy of living space (Lebensraum) “We must eliminate the disproportion between our population and our area…… Some of this land can be obtained from Russia….. We must secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled.” “(The state) must see to it that only the healthy beget children; that there is only one disgrace: despite one’s own sickness and deficiencies, to bring children into the world; and one highest honour : to renounce doing so. And conversely it must be considered reprehensible to withhold healthy children from the nation.” This would later develop into Hitler’s idea of the Master Race. “When you tell a lie, tell big lies.

This is what the Jews do, working on the principle, which is quite true in itself, that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility……” “Whoever wishes to win over the masses must know the key that will open the door to their hearts.” Mein Kampf - The Book Written by Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf Mein Kampf A Two-Volume Book Written by Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler's book, Mein Kampf, as seen on display at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Memorial in Jerusalem. (Photo by David Silverman/Getty Images) By Jennifer L. Goss, Contributing Writer Updated July 28, 2016. By 1925, 35-year-old Adolf Hitler was already a war veteran, leader of a political party, orchestrator of a failed coup, and a prisoner in a German prison. In July 1925, he also became a published book author with the release of the first volume of his work, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). The book, whose first volume was largely written during his eight-month imprisonment for his leadership in the failed coup, is a rambling discourse on Hitler’s ideology and goals for the future German state.

The second volume was published in December 1926 (however, the books themselves were printed with a 1927 publication date). The text initially suffered from slow sales but, like its author, would soon become a fixture in German society. Hitler’s Early Years in the Nazi Party At the end of World War I , Hitler, like so many other German veterans, found himself unemployed. So when he was offered a position to work as an informant for the newly established Weimar government, he seized the opportunity. continue reading below our video Profile of Adolf Hitler Hitler's duties were simple; he was to attend the meetings of newly formed political organizations and report upon their activities to government officials who were monitoring these parties. One of the parties, the German Workers’ Party (DAP), captivated Hitler so much during his attendance that the following spring he left his government position and decided to dedicate himself to the DAP. That same year (1920), the party changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), or Nazi Party . Hitler quickly gained renown as a powerful speaker.

Within the party’s early years, Hitler is credited with helping the party greatly increase membership through his powerful speeches against the government and the Treaty of Versailles . Hitler is also credited with helping to design the main tenants of the party’s platform. In July 1921, a shake-up occurred within the party and Hitler found himself in the position to replace party co-founder Anton Drexler as the chairperson of the Nazi Party. Hitler's Failed Coup: The Beer Hall Putsch In the fall of 1923, Hitler decided it was time to seize upon the public’s discontent with the Weimar government and organize a putsch (coup) against both the Bavarian state government and the German federal government. With assistance from the SA, SA leader Ernst Roehm, Herman Göring, and famous World War I General Erich von Ludendorff , Hitler and Nazi Party members stormed a Munich beer hall where members of the local Bavarian government were gathered for an event. Hitler and his men quickly brought the event to a standstill by setting up machine guns at the entrances and falsely announcing that the Nazis had seized both the Bavarian state government and the German federal government.

After a short period of perceived success, several missteps led to the putsch quickly falling apart. After being shot at in the street by the German military, Hitler fled and hid for two days in the attic of a party supporter. He was then caught, arrested, and placed in Landsberg prison to await his trial for his role in the attempted Beer Hall Putsch . On Trial for Treason In March 1924, Hitler and the other leaders of the putsch were put on trial for high treason. Hitler, himself, faced possible deportation from Germany (due to his status as a non-citizen) or a life sentence in prison. He took advantage of the media coverage of the trial to paint himself as an ardent supporter of the German people and the German state, wearing his Iron Cross for Bravery in WWI and speaking out against the “injustices” perpetrated by the Weimar government and their collusion with the Treaty of Versailles. Instead of projecting himself as a man guilty of treason, Hitler came across during his 24-day trial as an individual who had the best interests of Germany in mind. He was sentenced to five years in Landsberg prison but would serve only eight months.

The others on trial received lesser sentences and some were released without any penalty. The Writing of Mein Kampf Life in Landsberg prison was far from difficult for Hitler. He was permitted to walk freely throughout the grounds, wear his own clothing, and entertain visitors as he chose. He was also permitted to mingle with other prisoners, including his personal secretary, Rudolf Hess, who was imprisoned for his own part in the failed putsch. During their time together in Landsberg, Hess served as Hitler’s personal typist while Hitler dictated some of the work that would become known as first volume of Mein Kampf. Hitler decided to write Mein Kampf for a two-fold purpose: to share his ideology with his followers and also to help recoup some of the legal expenses from his trial. Interestingly, Hitler originally proposed the title, Four-and-a-Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice; it was his publisher who shortened it to My Struggle or Mein Kampf.

Volume 1 The first volume of Mein Kampf, subtitled “Eine Abrechnung” or “A Reckoning,” was written mostly during Hitler’s stay in Landsberg and ultimately consisted of 12 chapters when it was published in July 1925. This first volume covered Hitler’s childhood through the initial development of the Nazi Party. Although many of the book’s readers thought it would be autobiographical in nature, the text itself only uses Hitler’s life events as a springboard for long-winded diatribes against those he viewed as inferior, particularly the Jewish people. Hitler also frequently wrote against the political scourges of Communism , which he purported was directly linked to the Jews, whom he believed were attempting to take over the world. Hitler also wrote that the present German government and its democracy was failing the German people and that his plan to remove the German parliament and instate the Nazi Party as the leadership would save Germany from future ruin. Volume 2 Volume two of Mein Kampf, subtitled “Die Nationalsozialistische Bewegung,” or “The National Socialist Movement,” consisted of 15 chapters and was published in December 1926.

This volume was intended to cover how the Nazi Party was founded; however, it was more of a rambling discourse of Hitler’s political ideology. In this second volume, Hitler layed out his goals for future German success. Crucial to the success of Germany, Hitler believed, was gaining more “living space” or lebensraum . He wrote that this gain should be made by first spreading the German empire to the East, into the land of the inferior Slavic peoples who should be enslaved and their natural resources confiscated for the better, more racially pure, German people. Hitler also discussed the methods he would employ to gain the support of the German populace, including a massive propaganda campaign and the rebuilding of the German military. Reception for Mein Kampf The initial reception for Mein Kampf was not particularly impressive; the book sold roughly 10,000 copies in its first year. Most of the book’s initial purchasers were either Nazi Party faithfuls or members of the general public who were wrongly anticipating a scandalous autobiography. By the time Hitler became Chancellor in 1933 , approximately 250,000 copies of the book’s two volumes had been sold.

Hitler’s ascension to the chancellorship breathed new life into sales of Mein Kampf. For the first time, in 1933, sales of the full edition eclipsed the one million mark. Several special editions were also created and distributed to the German people. For instance, it became customary for every newlywed couple in Germany to receive a special newlywed’s edition of the work. By 1939, 5.2 million copies had been sold. At the outset of World War II , additional copies were distributed to each soldier. Copies of the work were also customary gifts for other life milestones such as graduations and births of children. By the war’s end in 1945, the number of copies sold rose to 10 million. However, despite its popularity on the printing presses, most Germans would later admit that they had not read the 700-page, two-volume text to any great extent. Mein Kampf Today With Hitler’s suicide and the conclusion of World War II, the property rights of Mein Kampf went to the Bavarian state government (since Munich was Hitler’s last official address before the Nazi seizure of power).

Leaders in the Allied-occupied portion of Germany, which contained Bavaria, worked with Bavarian authorities to institute a ban on the publication of Mein Kampf within Germany. Upheld by the reunified German government, that ban continued until 2015. In 2015, the copyright on Mein Kampf expired and the work became part of the public domain, thus negating the ban. In an effort to prevent the book from further becoming a tool of neo-Nazi hatred, the Bavarian state government has begun a campaign to publish annotated editions in several languages with hopes that these educational editions will become more popular than editions published for other, less noble, purposes. Mein Kampf still remains one of the most widely published and known books in the world. This work of racial hatred was a blueprint for the plans of one of the most destructive governments in world history. Once a fixture in German society, there is hope that today it can serve as a learning tool to prevent such tragedies in future generations.

Hitler develops his antisemitic ideas - Key Stage 3 - The Holocaust Explained Hitler develops his antisemitic ideas Hitler develops his antisemitic ideas © 2011 Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority. 3 0 Although Hitler wanted to become a military dictator, he saw that he would be unable to take the country by force. He now knew that he would have to use legal and democratic methods. While in prison, he wrote his book Mein Kampf, in which he set out his political ideas and developed his antisemitic ideas. Following Germany’s defeat in the First World War, Hitler became convinced that people in Germany - particularly Jews - had worked against the country to achieve their own ends. Hitler felt that, as Germany continued to suffer throughout the 1920s, drastic action was required to save the country. From his experiences both with the army and later with the NSDAP, Hitler learned to persuade others with his speeches. Mein Kampf did not contain any new ideas. Many people in the 19th and 20th centuries had believed that races were not equal, and that some people were stronger or better than others.

Hitler took on these ideas, and stated that Germans were part of a race called ‘Aryans’ who were superior to all others and would one day rule the world. In Hitler’s view, Jews were a separate race and could not be German. He believed the Jews conspired against Aryans to rule the world for themselves. As some of the most prominent German communists had been Jewish, Hitler believed Jews had created communism to destroy the Aryans. His aim became to destroy communism and the Jews. This month in history Excerpts from Mein Kampf | Jewish Virtual Library Excerpts from Mein Kampf Tweet Mein Kampf (German, "My Struggle") is an autobiographical manifesto written by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler while imprisoned following the failed Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923. In the manifesto - which includes two volumes and fifteen chapters - Hitler outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germany . - On the Use of Propoganda Fighting Jews as Defending God [p.60] The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the mass of numbers and their dead weight.

Thus it denies the value of personality in man, contests the significance of nationality and race, and thereby withdraws from humanity the premise of its existence and its culture. As a foundation of the universe, this doctrine would bring about the end of any order intellectually conceivable to man. And as, in this greatest of all recognizable organisms, the result of an application of such a law could only be chaos, on earth it could only be destruction for the inhabitants of this planet. If, with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victorious over the other peoples of the world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity and this planet will, as it did thousands of years ago, move through the ether devoid of men. Eternal Nature inexorably avenges the infringement of her commands.

Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord On the "Big Lie" [p.134] All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.

For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes. From time immemorial, however, the Jews have known better than any others how falsehood and calumny can be exploited. Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely, that they are a religious community, where as in reality they are a race? And what a race! One of the greatest thinkers that mankind has produced has branded the Jews for all time with a statement which is profoundly and exactly true. Schopenhauer called the Jew "The Great Master of Lies". Those who do not realize the truth of that statement, or do not wish to believe it, will never be able to lend a hand in helping Truth to prevail. On the Protocols of the Elders of Zion [p.279] To what an extent the whole existence of this people is based on a continuous lie is shown incomparably by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, so infinitely hated by the Jews.

They are based on a forgery, the Frankfurter Zeitung moans and screams once every week: the best proof that they are authentic ... For once this book has become the common property of a people, the Jewish menace may be considered as broken. On the Weapons of the Jews [pp. 293-296] His unfailing instinct in such things scents the original soul (die urspruengliche Seele) in everyone, and his hostility is assured to anyone who is not spirit of his spirit. Since the Jew is not the attacked but the attacker, not only anyone who attacks passes as his enemy, but also anyone who resists him. But the means with which he seeks to break such reckless but upright souls is not honest warfare, but lies and slander. Here he stops at nothing, and in his vileness he becomes so gigantic that no one need be surprised if among our people the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew. The ignorance of the broad masses about the inner nature of the Jew, the lack of instinct and narrow-mindedness of our upper classes, make the people an easy victim for this Jewish campaign of lies.

While from innate cowardice the upper classes turn away from a man whom the Jew attacks with lies and slander, the broad masses from stupidity or simplicity believe everything. The state authorities either cloak themselves in silence or, what usually happens, in order to put an end to the Jewish press campaign, they persecute the unjustly attacked, which, in the eyes of such an official ass, passes as the preservation of state authority and the safeguarding of law and order. Slowly fear and the Marxist weapon of Jewry descend like a nightmare on the mind and soul of decent people. They begin to tremble before the terrible enemy and thus have become his final victim. The Jews domination in the state seems so assured that now not only can he call himself a Jew again, but he ruthlessly admits his ultimate national and political designs. A section of his race openly owns itself to be a foreign people, yet even here they lie. For while the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim.

It doesnt even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organization for their international world swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks. It is a sign of their rising confidence and sense of security that at a time when one section is still playing the German, Frenchman, or Englishman, the other with open effrontery comes out as the Jewish race. How close they see approaching victory can be seen by the hideous aspect which their relations with the members of other peoples takes on. With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people. With every means he tries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate. Just as he himself systematically ruins women and girls, he does not shrink back from pulling down the blood barriers for others, even on a large scale.

It was and it is Jews who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily resulting bastardization, throwing it down from its cultural and political height, and himself rising to be its master. For a racially pure people which is conscious of its blood can never be enslaved by the Jew. In this world he will forever be master over bastards and bastards alone. And so he tries systematically to lower the racial level by a continuous poisoning of individuals. And in politics he begins to replace the idea of democracy by the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the organized mass of Marxism he has found the weapon which lets him dispense with democracy and in its stead allows him to subjugate and govern the peoples with a dictatorial and brutal fist. He works systematically for revolutionization in a twofold sense: economic and political. Around peoples who offer too violent a resistance to attack from within he weaves a net of enemies, thanks to his international influence, incites them to war, and finally, if necessary, plants a flag of revolution on the very battlefields.

In economics he undermines the states until the social enterprises which have become unprofitable are taken from the state and subjected to his financial control. In the political field he refuses the state the means for its self-preservation, destroys the foundations of all national self-maintenance and defense, destroys faith in the leadership, scoffs at its history and past, and drags everything that is truly great into the gutter. Culturally, he contaminates art, literature, the theater, makes a mockery of natural feeling, overthrows all concepts of beauty and sublimity, of the noble and the good, and instead drags men down into the sphere of his own base nature. Religion is ridiculed, ethics and morality represented as outmoded, until the last props of a nation in its struggle for existence in this world have fallen. Now begins the great last revolution. In gaining political power the Jew casts off the few cloaks that he still wears. The democratic peoples Jew becomes the blood-Jew and tyrant over peoples. In a few years he tries to exterminate the national intelligentsia and by robbing the peoples of their natural intellectual leadership makes them ripe for the slaves lot of permanent subjugation.

The most frightful example of this kind is offered by Russia, where he killed or starved about thirty million people with positively fanatical savagery, in part amid inhuman tortures, in order to give a gang of Jewish journalists and stock exchange bandits domination over a great people. The end is not only the end of the freedom of the peoples oppressed by the Jew, but also the end of this parasite upon the nations. After the death of his victim, the vampire sooner or later dies too. On the Use of Propoganda [Chapter 6] The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the masses' attention to certain facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first time placed within their field of vision ... All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be. But if, as in propaganda for sticking out a war, the aim is to influence a whole people, we must avoid excessive intellectual demands on our public, and too much caution cannot be extended in this direction.

The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more exclusively it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the more effective it will be. And this is the best proof of the soundness or unsoundness of a propaganda campaign, and not success pleasing a few scholars or young aesthetes. The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses. The fact that our bright boys do not understand this merely shows how mentally lazy and conceited they are. Once understood how necessary it is for propaganda in be adjusted to the broad mass, the following rule results: It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided, like scientific instruction, for instance. The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.

As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out. Thus we see that propaganda must follow a simple line and correspondingly the basic tactics must be psychologically sound ... What, for example, would we say about a poster that was supposed to advertise a new soap and that described other soaps as 'good'? We would only shake our heads. Exactly the same applies to political advertising. The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly. Sources: Yad Vashem - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Houghton Mifflin, New York: Hutchinson Publ. Ltd., London, 1969. The Historical Development of the Nazi Party Updated December 29, 2015.

Mein Kampf and Nazism Hitler spent only ten months in prison, but while there he wrote part of a book which was supposed to set out his ideas: it was called Mein Kampf. One problem historians and political thinkers have had with Hitler is that he had no ‘ideology’ as we’d like to call it, no coherent intellectual picture, but a rather confused mish-mash of ideas he had acquired from elsewhere, which he melded together with a heavy dose of opportunism. None of these ideas were unique to Hitler, and their origins can be found in imperial Germany and before, but this benefitted Hitler. He could bring the ideas together within him and present them to people already familiar with them: a vast amount of Germans, of all classes, knew them in a different form, and Hitler made them into supporters. continue reading below our video Profile of Adolf Hitler Hitler believed that the Aryans, and chiefly the Germans, were a Master Race which a terribly corrupted version of evolution, social Darwinism and outright racism all said would have to fight their way to a domination they were naturally supposed to achieve. Because there would be a struggle for dominance, the Aryans should keep their bloodlines clear, and not ‘interbreed’.

Just as the Aryans were at the top of this racial hierarchy, so other peoples were considered at the bottom, including the Slavs in Eastern Europe, and the Jews. Anti-Semitism was major part of Nazi rhetoric from the start, but the mentally and physically ill and anyone gay were considered equally offensive to German purity. Hitler’s ideology here has been described as terribly simple, even for racism. The identification of Germans as Aryans was intimately tied into a German nationalism. The battle for racial dominance would also be a battle for the dominance of the German state, and crucial to this was the destruction of the Treaty of Versailles and not just the restoration of the German Empire, not just the expansion of Germany to cover all European Germans, but the creation of a new Reich which would rule a massive Eurasian empire and become a global rival to the US. Key to this was the pursuit of Lebensraum , or living room, which meant conquering Poland and through into the USSR, liquidating the existing populations or using them as slaves, and giving Germans more land and raw materials.

Hitler hated communism and he hated the USSR, and Nazism, such as it was, was devoted to crushing the left wing in Germany itself, and then eradicating the ideology from as much of the world as the Nazis could reach. Given that Hitler wanted to conquer Eastern Europe, the presence of the USSR made for a natural enemy. All this was to be achieved under an authoritarian government. Hitler saw democracy, such as the struggling Weimar republic, as weak, and wanted a strong man figure like Mussolini in Italy. Naturally, he thought he was that strong man. This dictator would lead a Volksgemeinschaft, a nebulous term Hitler used to roughly mean a German culture filled with old fashioned ‘German’ values, free of class or religious differences. Growth in the Later Twenties Hitler was out of prison for the start of 1925, and within two months he had started to take back control of a party which had divided without him; one new division had produced Strasser’s National Socialist Freedom Party.

The Nazis had become a disordered mess, but they were refounded, and Hitler started a radical new approach: the party could not stage a coup, so it must get elected into Weimar’s government and change it from there. This wasn’t ‘going legal’, but pretending to while ruling the streets with violence. To do this, Hitler wanted to create a party which he had absolute control over, and which would put him in charge of Germany to reform it. There were elements in the party which opposed both these aspects, because they wanted a physical attempt on power, or because they wanted power instead of Hitler, and it took a full year before Hitler managed to largely wrestle back control. However there remained criticism and opposition from within the Nazis and one rival leader, Gregor Strasser , didn’t just remain in the party, he became hugely important in the growth of Nazi power (but he was murdered in the Night of the Long Knives for his opposition to some of Hitler’s core ideas.) With Hitler mostly back in charge the party focused on growing.

To do this it adopted a proper party structure with various branches throughout Germany, and also created a number of offshoot organisations to better attract a wider range of support, like the Hitler Youth or the Order of German Women. The twenties also saw two key developments: a man called Joseph Goebbels switched from Strasser to Hitler and was given the role of Gauleiter (a regional Nazi leader) for the extremely difficult to convince and socialist Berlin. Goebbels revealed himself to be a genius at propaganda and new media, and would assume a key role in the party managing just that in 1930. Equally, a personal bodyguard of blackshirts was created, dubbed the SS: Protection Squad or Schutz Staffel. By 1930 it had two hundred members; by 1945 it was the most infamous army in the world.

With membership quadrupling to over 100,000 by 1928, with an organised and strict party, and with many other right wing groups subsumed into their system, the Nazis could have thought themselves a real force to be reckoned with, but in the 1928 elections they polled terrible low results, winning just 12 seats. People on the left and in the centre began to consider Hitler a comic figure who wouldn’t amount to much, even a figure who could be easily manipulated. Unfortunately for Europe, the world was about to experience problems which would pressure Weimar Germany into cracking, and Hitler had the resources to be there when it happened.

Question: Who set out his political ideas in Mein Kampf?
Answer: Adolf Hitler